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"What’s going on?"

"There’s no running water," Rebecca said

"What happened? The entire first floor is flooded!"

"We don’t know," said Maggie "Lynch is on her way up now to tell us, I think"

"Have you seen Eleanor?"

Maggie shook her head She hadn’t put her contacts in yet, and seeured she ith you"

"Oh," I said nonchalantly, not wanting to let on that I wasn’t in ht "Maybe she’s still in the room"

"Or maybe she’s with Genevieve," Charlotte said Her hair was pinned around her head in rollers She was clutching a loofah and shower caddy with dozens of shampoo and cos when I woke up"

"She probably had an early Board of Monitors ie, almost bitterly "She’s never around any about her plans for winter break, when the door to the hallung open Mrs Lynch bounded down the hall, her heels clicking on the wood floors

"Girls," she shouted

Everyone quieted down

"It see malfunction in the bathrooht and burst Maintenance should be here within the hour to fix it and drain the water froenerously offered us the bathroo them as we speak" Professor Bliss was their dorather your toiletries We’re heading over in fifteeninto a parallel universe The layout of the building was exactly the same, but the walls were painted a deep shade ofa shadowy atar shop Everything sled over the banister

The boys’ bathroo of the second floor, just like our dorm The door to the shoas propped open, and steam billowed into the hallway Eleanor hadn’t been in our rooet my towel and soap Her bed was completely undisturbed, the pillows puffed and the covers folded and tucked So where was she? I walked through the rows of showers, listening for her, but all of the voices belonged to other people: first years, second years, third years, but no Eleanor

After I showered and got changed, I dawdled outside the bathrooirl left, I gave up and went downstairs, out into the white, wintery irls’ dor on the stoop with four maintenance workers They were all at least a foot taller than her, and dressed in periwinkle coveralls that were soaked fro went really wrong with the pipes down there," one of thethe sweat off his terease-stained rag hung out of his pocket "It’s i fro and drain it In the meantime, you’ll have to etting enough wood"

I lingered on the top step to wait for Lynch’s reply, but she lanced up at et into any h the doors and went back tothrough my mind: The Gottfried Curse

I didn’t tell anyone else about the curse or ht with Dante I would have told Eleanor, but she never showed up for Latin Or Philosophy In fact, she didn’t go to any classes at all I sat taking notes while Miss LaBarge scribbled soot that Eleanor wasn’t there, and leaned over to whisper to her, only to be met with an e up in a feeeks, and Eleanor’s grades were terrible She’d been skipping o to the library

Without her, classes dragged by, and I grew frustrated with her for being gone when I had so s to talk to her about Eleanor would surely have a theory about the heart attacks "Radiation below the school grounds," she ht say "Or a mass murderer equipped with a new kind of weapon that induces heart failure" And the cloth in both s Maybe they were electrocuted Maybe soet Gottfried students But why the as curses Only people and science So that’s what I focused on, watching the clock, counting down the minutes until the last period, when I would see Dante in Crude Sciences Last night seemed like a dream, except I could remember every detail--the way my stomach fluttered when he kissedus stumble around them; the way our bodies left a crescent-shaped crease on his bed I unwrapped eachDante’s velvety voice envelop me while I drifted off in class or waited on line in the dining hall It didn’t matter that Professor Lumbar was in a particularly bad mood or that Professor Chortle made us solve proofs for an hour and a half

When fifth period rolled around, I walked to class anxiously, inspectingthe door to the Observatory

Professor Starking bustled in behinda box of fil at our bench, his tie crisp around his neck and his blazer slung around the back of his chair I approached sloatching hiled in front of his face as he wrote so in his notebook

I walked up the side of the aisle until I was just behind hi notes in Latin Suddenly I felt nervous, as if everything I’d ever wanted inand I only had to reach out and take it But just as I liftedaway fros of a sht my palm to his lips and almost imperceptibly kissed it